n fifteen years Mrs. Meyer suffered from some
acute stomach trouble,' Mrs. Reinhardt said yesterday, 'and it
is my belief that it caused her death. Her general health had
been greatly benefited by abstaining from all food, but the
disorder from which she suffered most could not be cured. My
husband fasted for twenty-five days and was completely cured of
stomach trouble, and there were no ill effects in his case.'"

The impression of this death and of these fasts upon the minds of the
medical profession was perhaps fairly summed up by the eminent Horatio
C. Wood, M. D., LL. D., Clinical Professor of Nervous Diseases in the
University of Pennsylvania. He disregarded the legal phase of the
question, the question of the legality of a layman dealing out words of
cheer and comfort in cases in which the medical profession had retired
in total defeat. The question had been seriously raised as to whether
Mr. Ritter had not committed a crime against the laws of Pennsylvania,
and for what? For simply advising these people to stop all eating until
there would come a natural desire for food!

Professor Wood thus gave utterance in the _Press_ of May 10:

"'These people are falsifying,' he said, 'There have been liars,
you know, and they are not all dead. I don't believe for an
instant such stories as fasting totally for forty or fifty days
and keeping up energy and activity. It is contrary to common
sense as well as to all we know about the human body. I don't
know the object of deception, but somebody must be making money
out of it, or having a craving for notoriety. It is
preposterous. I understand that one of these fasters walked ten
miles a day, after doing altogether without nourishment for a
month or so. If these persons did what they claim to have
undergone, more than one death would have been charged against
the treatment, you may be sure.

"'You will remember that the professional forty-day fasters,
Tanner and Suci, were reduced to mere skin and bone, were almost
helpless, carefully husbanded every bit of their vital energy,
and took no exercise. They were _watched_ and studied
scientifically. And here is a woman, weighing only one hundred
pounds when she started fasting, claims she began to eat after
thirty-eight days of starvation, and had more energy and took
more exercise than in years. It is all amazingly absurd,